or not...

While I'm painting my girls toenails this afternoon (red with white polka dots, if you really want to know), Britten asks me: "Mommy, can I have your love?"

Me: "Oh, sweetie, of course you can! What do you mean, 'can you have my love'?"

Britten: "It means I want you to poop in your pants and throw your friends off your bed."

Oh. Never mind, then.

why to never have "serious talk" in front of your children

For whatever reason, I decided that having a discussion with my husband about having more children (or rather, not having more children) while my girls were playing in the same room was an appropriate thing to do. I brought it up in the first place because I've been contemplating surgery on my leg, but because I can't have the surgery without knowing that we're done having children, this is a decision we must be certain of. After going back and forth with my husband about the surgery, the pros and cons, etc, I made the following statement (rather hesitantly, if you must know):

"So, I am done having kids then..."

Ella, who had been oblivious to our conversation up to that point, quickly shot up and said: "No! No you can't! You just can't!"

Me, a little surprised by her response, asked: "Ella, do you even understand what we're talking about?"

Ella: "Yes, and you can't be done."

Me, still digging, because I still wasn't certain she knew what we were talking about: "What do you think that means when Mommy says that?"

Ella: "It means you're done with us kids and that you don't want to be a mommy. You're going to leave here and never come back."

You can imagine my shock to her response! She interpreted my simple statement of not wanting to have more children as "I'm done having kids! I don't want them anymore! I'm leaving!"

I instantly scooped Ella into my arms and squeezed her tightly. I told her how much I loved her and I assured her that I would never, ever leave her or the rest of the family. I LOVE being a Mommy. It's my most favorite thing in the whole wide world! I went on to explain that when Mommy says, "I'm done having kids," what I mean is that I'm done having babies and that I won't have a baby in my belly again.

Ella: "No, you can't! You can't be done! You HAVE to have another baby in your belly! You just have to!"

The moral of this story is to never try to have a serious conversation in front of your children unless you want them to gravely misinterpret what you're saying or you want them involved in the decision making process.

tootsie tuesday

bringing home the bacon

Ella and Britten are at the ages where they enjoy to make-believe and act out all sorts of their wild ideas. It's during these times that my girls actually get along with each other and somehow put their differences aside. That's a very rare occurrence at our house, so I relish in these moments.

One of their favorites is pretending they're grocery shopping. I can't say I enjoy this particular game as it involves some clean-up on my part, but if they're not hurting themselves (or each other) in the process, I'll gladly take on the extra work.

They begin their grocery excursion by using a dining room chair as a grocery cart and moving it up alongside the pantry door. They open the door and start unloading food items from the pantry, item by item, and putting them on the chair. Once the "cart" is full, they slowly and carefully push the chair down our hallway to their bedroom (or they "drive home," as they call it) where they proceed to unload their groceries into their own "pantry" (aka their bookshelf). They make a few round trips like this before calling it quits. I usually step in at this point because they start talking about "making muffins" or "mixing granola" with their new groceries, and I'm not about to clean up that mess.

Here's my happy little shoppers:

It's funny how they never "pay" for their groceries. :)

san diego

I've been trying to get my bearings since coming home from San Diego on Saturday, hence the reason for not blogging about my trip yet. There's honestly not much to say, except we had a great time. The weather was a bit chilly and it rained quite a bit, so my hopes of basking in the rays were dashed, but we had fun anyway.

With my husband working for a large part of the weekend, we weren't able to venture very far away and do anything "touristy." But he did have some down time and we took advantage of that by doing things we wouldn't normally do with our children around - eating out at nice restaurants and going to a movie were a couple of the highlights of our trip.

We splurged and ate really big meals every night, trying not to feel guilty as we rolled ourselves out of the restaurants when we were done. I was preparing to dig in to my meal...Any guesses on where we were?!
We spent the majority of our time with our good friends, Jason and Amber, and we shared a lot of laughs together over the weekend. Jason and my husband work together, so Amber and I were each other's companion when the guys were busy. Amber was a massage therapist before having her son and she was kind enough to give me a foot massage on our last night in San Diego. I couldn't have asked for a better ending to my trip!
We had a fabulous time but were anxious to see our girls when we got home. All things went rather smoothly for Grandma Patty, despite a few minor bumps in the road, and I came home to a totally weaned, sleeping-through-the-night Chloe. What a great feeling that was!

*** I promised an update on the detox, so I wanted to just say that I am a true believer in the Arbonne Sea Source detox. It did wonders for my skin, it really did. I had my husband feel my cheek the other day and he described it "as soft as a lamb's bottom." I wasn't sure how to feel about that response, but decided it was a man's way of complimenting me on my skin. :)

one by one

I discovered the most hilarious thing when I opened the bathroom door this morning. Being the wonderfully independent player that Chloe is, she will shut the door to whatever room she is in and continue to entertain and play by herself for a very long time. But because she is only 15 months old, and I tend to always think worse case scenario ere on the side of extreme caution, I check in on her periodically to make sure she's not doing anything that is potentially life threatening.

When I opened the bathroom door, I was expecting to find Chloe either playing in the toilet, unrolling the toilet paper or pulling out all the hair stuff from the drawer. Instead, I found Chloe doing something much more clever and seemingly, much more fun than any one of those things:

Chloe found my box of tampons under the sink, carried them over to the stool, opened our laundry shoot door and proceeded to drop my tampons down the shoot.

I stood there in amazement as I watched my baby drop them down one by one, laughing to myself so as not to disturb her intricate little game.

There's something about this little girl that makes her almost edible and I seriously have to squeeze her every time I see her. I mean that in most loving way, so please don't report me to child protection services.

After Chloe emptied the box, I carried her downstairs so we could both see the results of her hard work. I was so proud of my little girl!

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I did not decide to let all three of my children run wild in Target while my husband and I shopped for a new car seat for Ella. Nor did I let them climb all over the Target display cases, where they did not have the time of their lives pretending they were in a cave. Chloe, in particular, did not get such a kick out of this! I would never let my perfectly, well-behaved children act like this while shopping in Target because I care way too much about what people think of me as a parent! Oh, and I did not continually feed them marshmallows and candy hearts while shopping just to keep them happy and preoccupied. I would never do that!
I did not have the same load of laundry sitting in my washing machine all week, and I did not re-wash this load of laundry 5 times because it smelled so bad! I'm so good about staying on top of my laundry that I would never have about 10 dirty loads waiting to be washed.

I do not keep my children in their pajamas most days just to save on laundry. I dress them every morning, do their hair in cute ponies, and have them looking perfectly groomed every day!

I did not let a whole chicken cook in the crockpot this week for so long that it turned almost entirely into mush. And I did not gag at the sight and smell of this while taking it out and salvaging the pieces that were still edible.

While scrubbing my kitchen floor the other day, I did not decide to pull the rug over a spot of food that would take too much time and effort to clean up. I'm not that kind of housekeeper!

Those were a few highlights of things I most certainly did not do this week! I am a perfect mother, wife and housekeeper and I would never stoop to that level!

detox update

I haven't updated over the last couple of days because there really isn't anything "new" to report. At this point, I'll give my final update when I'm done. I am feeling really good, though, and can especially see the benefits of drinking a lot more water. If anything, this detox is getting me into the good habit of always drinking water --- something I've never been good about.